A leading academic appointed by the UK government to review the effects of smartphones on teenagers has suggested that blanket bans are "unrealistic and potentially detrimental." Amy Orben, from the University of Cambridge, will lead the work on children and smartphone use commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) along with a team of other academics from a number of UK universities. Ministers have so far been resistant to implementing any new legal restrictions on social media and smartphones for children that goes further than the current Online Safety Act, which clamps down on harmful content. Some MPs have been pushing for further restrictions that go beyond harmful content, including access to social media for those under 16, full bans on smartphones in schools, or restrictions on social media algorithms that are able to train addictive content on young teenagers. In a paper Orben published this week with four co-authors in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), they said bans and restrictions were unlikely to be effective, though they did advocate for children and teens to have phone-free spaces. The paper said that there had been "increased public pressure to mitigate the potential harmful effects of smartphones and social media on health, wellbeing, academic performance, disruptive behaviours and bullying." But it said the evidence suggested there were "no simple, one-size-fits-all answers" and that while most parents and policymakers were "primed to believe arguments that smartphones and social media are inherently harmful, the evidence about their overall effect on children is not clear-cut." Bans on devices could "undermine children's rights to technology design and education that will help them thrive as adults", the academics warned. The researchers did raise concern about "trending content" aimed at younger users to encourage recurrent use, saying those designs were "purposefully not supporting the development of healthy tech habits."
